1975 - DOC SAVAGE: THE MAN OF BRONZE, Producer George Pal's final film

Sadly the final feature film from George Pal is not one of his best.  Pal along with the director Michael Anderson decided to make a rather campy film of a 1930's pulp fiction hero.  Doc Savage was a character who went around righting wrongs with his team he called "The Fabulous Five."

Pal who was apparently hunting around for another film project settled on an original Doc Savage story instead of adopting one of the 67 stories that were already in paperback.  Producer Pal hired Michael Anderson a British director who had a rather proficient career directing such films as Around The World In 80 Days, Logan's Run and The Dam Busters.  Towards the end of his career Anderson ended up working in television.

 Supposedly a management change at the studio doomed the film and it languished at Warner Brothers, nobody knew how to market it.  A box office failure.  The bigger problem with the film was the campy tone that was just completely out of touch with the 1970's film audience.  The film was probably about 20 years to early.  Eventually films like Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark were able to mix camp with thrills

 

Doc Savage isn't the total disaster I've been led to believe it was.  The film does have a kind of cheap studio look to it, but the actor Ron Ely does make a fairly impressive Doc Savage. The film is entertaining in it's own modest way and as I have said before, "I've seen a lot worse."

 

The running time is 112 minutes, George Pal and Joe Morhaim wrote the screenplay.